“Gee, Tom,” he murmured. “I couldn’t do that; little old Arthur S. Family Pride and I are still buddies. I’ve got to go through, clean through. I just couldn’t go back there and quit cold turkey before my new found friend, Sarah Ann. Not in a thousand years.”
“Well, there’s one thing certain,” responded the other with a note of finality. “If you call up little Olga or that trained manager of hers they’ll burn you up.”
Jimmy looked sadly at his friend.
“Ain’t it hell, Tom?” he opined grimly. “Ain’t it just double-distilled hell?”
He stood for a moment staring straight ahead as if lost in abstraction. And then he found speech again.
“I won’t call either of ’em up,” he said firmly, “but I’m going to let that story ride. There must be some way out of the mess. Apple pie, eh? I never did like it.”
Chapter Nineteen
Jimmy wasn’t able to concentrate on his regular duties that afternoon. He had acquired an obsession and he couldn’t shake it off. The problem of how to make good on his promise to the gushy Miss Slosson occupied his entire time and attention. A more careless or indifferent wayfarer in the field of theatrical publicity might have been content to let that plump and pleasing person print her story on the following day and let it go at that, neglecting to follow the idea up and failing to redeem his pledges. Jimmy knew a dozen of his confreres who would just drop the thing on the principle that half a loaf is better than no bread, but he wasn’t that kind of press agent. He didn’t know it, but he was really a great creative artist in his own sphere and he got just the same inner satisfaction out of seeing his ideas blossom into realities that a great painter gets as he watches an imagined color harmony spring into life on the easel before him, or that a stylist thrills to when he achieves a perfect phrase after a tiresome search for the inevitable word.
The thought of apple pie haunted him. He just had to have one delivered from Chicago for Miss Slosson, but how to accomplish this feat without notifying Madame Stephano or her manager worried him. He didn’t know anyone in that city he could trust to ship one on in time and he rather figured that even if he did wire or telephone an acquaintance there the latter would take the request as a weird practical joke of some sort and pay no serious attention to it.